2005 PRICE INSight
National Weather Service Takes Enterprise Approach to Multiple-Program Cost Estimating, Planning and Control
Tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, and floods are neither planned nor controlled. Timely, accurate forecasts and warnings that save lives and property define the critical mission of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service (NOAA NWS). NWS employees and contractors accomplish the mission 24 x 7 through science, technology and multiple infusion programs that sustain and improve services for public and commercial good.
Multiple-program investment portfolios so critical to agencies like NOAA present special challenges for Government. Competition for funds is fierce. Individual programs that are more able to define and justify their short- and long-term costs and effectiveness fare better in the struggle for funding than an entire portfolio of programs needed to carry out the overall agency mission.
Capabilities to define, analyze, and justify programs at the agency level clearly and reliably are essential to receiving vital resources. At NOAA NWS and other government agencies, a shift is underway from individual program to "portfolio affordability management." The strategy calls for greater prioritization, integration, and extensibility of programs using PRICE's methods and tools to improve cost estimating, planning and control across the agency mission.
The Office of Science and Technology at NOAA NWS is in the process of establishing such an enterprise approach. All investments in new tools and technology for program planning and control are first qualified in terms of their compatibility with the organization's mission and oversight requirements. NOAA is using cost planning and control to "take the pulse of the planet" and align spending with a hierarchy of agency-level, performance-based measures and outcomes.
The NWS approach features a steady and measured process improvement that will lead to the introduction of improved tools and techniques to support the new strategy. Emphasis is placed on the practices and methods central to preparing credible and reliable estimates of program resource requirements. The logic used to attract funding for individual programs is now being scaled to the requirements of multiple-program portfolios.
Click here to download the presentation delivered at PRICE's US Symposium.
